#OLIVER HOLT: I’d like to thank Solskjaer for making me feel 16 again"

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OLIVER HOLT: I’d like to thank Solskjaer for making me feel 16 again

When I was a teenager and still played in the first love of football, I got a ticket for Aston Villa & # 39; European Cup quarter-final tie with Juventus in Villa Park

It was the season after the 1982 World Cup and I could hardly believe that I was going to look Paolo Rossi, Marco Tardelli, Dino Zoff and some other heroes of Italy & # 39; s triumph in Spain in the flesh.

I took my place in the Holte End in a lot of time. Rossi scored in the first minute, right in front of me, an almost header of an Antonio Cabrini cross. The Villa fans are silent, but I can still remember how my heart jumped.

In the train home I decided that I would never see a repetition of the goal of Rossi. I did not want me to have memory that was broken by television pictures.

I wanted to keep it as my memory, the memory I had of being there, not a reminder of looking at an image on a screen. Terribly intense, I know, but I was 16 and that's how I felt.

There are times when you wonder whether football has lost the power to move you as it did. There are times when you think you have become addicted to age and cynicism and experience and you will never again feel such a rush when you look at it again.

Then a night like the one in the Parc des Princes goes last Wednesday and you turn into a child again.

You want to remember every detail. You want to put it on your brain. Get off the metro at Porte d & # 39; Auteuil, fleeing from the thunder of fireworks exploding in the street, to the stadium and seeing the big sign above the main entrance that says & # 39; Ici, C & # 39; est Paris & # 39 ;.

Seeing the faces of the PSG stars – Kylian Mbappe, Edinson Cavani, Angel di Maria, Gianluigi Buffon and Marco Verratti – staring from a banner and thinking that you're afraid of United's -power team tonight.

That

Seeing Paddy Crerand, one of the gatekeepers of the soul of the club, looking for his place in the press box. Marcus Rashford, Andreas Pereira and Scott McTominay in a starting line-up plagued by injury and Tahith Chong and Mason Greenwood on the bench.

read somewhere that Greenwood, who has never made the appearance of the first team for United, is so young that the next day he should miss lessons at the Ashton-on-Mersey school

Note that Fred, who has had such a miserable season, is fighting as if he knows that this game is his chance of redemption. Thinking as a journalist.

Thinking like a journalist. Thinking what a story this would be if United could turn it around. It also feels like something else is left.

Seeing Ole Gunnar Solskjaer near the edge of his technical area in that yellow bib the officers had had him carry, more animated than you have ever seen him before.

Thinking of 1999. Thinking, even if PSG became right even when they ripping United. apart from the right of United, that there was something about this match, thinking that PSG chance after chance had passed, thinking that it felt like the Champions League final in Barcelona when Bayern Munich was in charge, Mehmet Scholl shot on the pole, Carsten Jancker hit the bar and in one way or another United clung to it, ready for that magical ending.

The second half is a haze. Then Chong comes up, and then Greenwood. Suddenly the referee runs the last minute on the sidelines, watching the TV monitor, walking back on the field and pointing to the spot

Sports still writes the best scripts. It still creates the most fantastic stories and lets them play for you. When Rashford hit that penalty, the man on the chair next to me in the squeezer pushed me hard in my arm, passing all appearances of restraint.

Someone did that in Sydney when Jonny Wilkinson kicked the winning drop in the final of the World Cup. Almost knocked me in line in front.

Regarding the moment that I want to freeze in my memory as if I froze the goal of Rossi, it was the moment that the whistle went and the young team of United sprinted towards their fans at the end of the ground. It felt like the moment when the club regained his soul. It felt like Manchester United became Manchester United again.

Journalists are usually immune to such pleas, but for these a bunch of hands went up . Mine too.

If Solskaya is overlooked by some act of madness, he will always have Paris.

I saw Crerand in the press conference.

I saw Crerand in the press conference. & # 39; Where is that in the history of United? & # 39; I asked him … Above it with Barcelona, ​​& # 39; he said. & # 39; I think he will get the job, or not sometimes. & # 39; I hope so.

One day I want to thank Solskjaer for reminding me what a beautiful game this is. One day I want to thank him because he made me 16 again.

I would like to thank United interim manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer for feeling again

Their keeper Jonas Lossl gave us one of the moments of the season when he set a miracle

Wagner left the club in January, Huddersfield goes down and Lossl, who has had another good season and has no contract in the summer , is connected with Marseille and Monaco. The fairy tale at Huddersfield will have to be re-started.

Phil Neville joined you. a small group of football managers from England who won a trophy last week when the women's team defeated Brazil and Japan and signed with the USA to lift the SheBelieves Cup in America

The World Cup in France is only a few months away . Women's football is growing and growing, the shot of England to win it can still offer the story of our summer.

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#OLIVER HOLT: I’d like to thank Solskjaer for making me feel 16 again"